China's National IC Fund Leads DeepSeek's First External Funding Round at $45 Billion Valuation — State Capital Anchors China's AI Model Champion

Bloomberg, citing a Financial Times report, confirmed on May 6–7, 2026 that China's state-backed National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund (the 'Big Fund' — Guojia Jicheng Dianlu Chanye Touzi Jijin, or 国家集成电路产业投资基金) is leading negotiations for DeepSeek's first external funding round, targeting a valuation of $45 billion. TechCrunch and TechNode independently confirmed the report. The $45 billion valuation represents a dramatic acceleration from the $20 billion+ estimates from weeks earlier — when Tencent and Alibaba were initially reported as potential investors — and reflects both global recognition of DeepSeek's technical achievements (V4 natively optimized for Huawei Ascend hardware) and Beijing's strategic determination to formally designate DeepSeek as a state-sponsored national AI champion. Founded by Liang Wenfeng from the High-Flyer (幻方科技) quantitative hedge fund, DeepSeek has been entirely self-funded through its V1, V2, V3, R1, and V4 model generations — making this the first external capital raise in the company's history. The Big Fund's involvement is strategically profound: the same state vehicle that invested $95 billion+ across China's semiconductor supply chain (Phases I–III, targeting SMIC, HiSilicon, YMTC, CXMT) is now anchoring China's leading AI model company, creating a direct capital bridge between China's semiconductor self-sufficiency program and its AI model leadership. Phase III Big Fund investment in AI model capability represents an explicit acknowledgment that China's AI sovereignty strategy requires both hardware (chips, fabs) and software (models, frameworks) to be controlled domestically. Tencent and Alibaba — both of which entered separate discussions to invest in DeepSeek — would join as strategic cloud technology partners rather than purely financial investors. Reports indicate Liang Wenfeng is seeking capital primarily to offer employee shareholding to retain researchers being aggressively poached by rival AI labs including ByteDance, Alibaba, and Moonshot AI. DeepSeek has attracted extraordinary talent density with a lean team of approximately 200 core researchers. The $45 billion valuation at first-round pricing compares to Anthropic's $61 billion (March 2025), OpenAI's $300 billion+ (implied by latest rounds), and Mistral AI's $6 billion — placing DeepSeek as the most valuable AI startup in China and among the top five globally. The Big Fund's entry into AI model investment, historically concentrated on semiconductor manufacturing, signals Beijing's formal recognition that AI model capability is now equally strategic to hardware self-sufficiency — the two pillars of Xi Jinping's tech sovereignty doctrine are being unified under the same state investment vehicle.